Hi, I am hoping this is a useful look into offering functional websites to clients including CMS, CRM, online shops and email marketing.

 

We have been in the web design business for over 6 years now and we kept noticing that there was never one solution that worked for the majority of clients and we would keep reinventing the wheel. Choosing a CMS that has all the CRM needs of the client for example is near on impossible. Combining this with an online shop? no chance. Then a client asks for email marketing. Do you set it all up yourself or suggest something like constant contact? It’s all very messy and smells of wasted time and efforts.

 

Bringing some examples into the equation we have Joomla, wordpress and many others that seem to offer dynamic solutions. Joomla, however is verbose, very hard to customise and will create a path of destruction months down the line when you have an issue with it and cannot fix it because you didn’t write any of it! Wordpress, undoubtedly great for blogging sites but what do you do when the client asks for more? One answer that I would definitely be using if I was not using my system is Modx, it’s completely customisable and allows you to use their platform to offer better services without coding it all yourself. It still has limitations though and will never be a complete business solution.

 

All the solutions mentioned above are free. I absolutely love anything free but I’ve finally realised that time is not free and I’d rather have my time! If you could use a commercial product that absorbed all the costs because of how quick it was to use and how much it offered the customer is that not actually better than free? I have a commercial product that I believe is the solution to almost every clients needs. I am not earning commissions to talk about it; I want designers to work with me to get the best out of it. I’m not sure how much I should explain as I’m sure you are all quite knowledgeable in the industry but Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) are set to be the future for businesses as they offer exceptional service, reliability and features for a very low monthly cost. My product can be set up for a very small fee and relies on a low monthly cost to run the services. The most important bit is that the web designer is NOT being taken out of the loop. Although the system allows the client to log in and manage and control a lot themselves they will almost certainly need an expert who can create custom applications for them as well as offering the usual services such as web design, graphic design, SEO, etc. What the system does is ensures we don’t reinvent the wheel by offering a platform to work on that is fully customisable to ensure the client gets the best results.

 

Have a look at www.wysi.co.uk

 

I’d be keen to talk to designers and other experts about this as a concept and how it would work for them as we have the product ready on a plate but want to make sure we serve it correctly. Just to give a bit more detail the product is not just a CMS at all! It is a fully integrated CMS with CRM, online shop, email marketing campaigns further powered by a reporting and analysis system. It has an infinite amount of uses and is something that most businesses in the world could benefit from.

 

I look forward to hearing people’s opinions and I hope this is not seen primarily as a sales pitch. I want to offer good advice to people searching for a platform to use and allow people to make their own decision. I also want to discuss the system with designers not to sell it but perhaps to help designers benefit from it! Thanks for your time.

 

Luke

Looks very sales pitchy to me.

 

Might be interesting for some people though, we have our own internal framework so we dont reinvent the wheel as such.

Why are you trying to sell us. We all do what you do bud.